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Tesla Holiday Update: New UI for Model 3 and Y, Light Show, blind spot camera improvements & more
Just a few days before Christmas, Tesla is kicking off the holidays with a bang. This year’s Holiday Update includes a few fun surprises for Tesla owners, including new games and a few other fun features.
Teslascope, a Tesla software update tracker service, has shared that the 2021.44.25 update is being rolled out to employees for now, with a wide release following in the lead up to Christmas. Reports shared online suggest that the update works very smoothly on vehicles like the Model 3 and Model Y, however.
New Features
First off is the Light Show, which enables Tesla vehicles to dance to a choreographed light show any time of the year. The feature was a signature trick of the Model X, so it is pretty interesting that Tesla is now rolling it out to the other vehicles in its lineup. The Light Show feature can be accessed through the Toybox.
In its Holiday Update, Tesla also introduced the Customizable App Launcher, allowing owners to customize the menu bar in their infotainment systems. This should go perfectly hand-in-hand with the Model 3 and Model Y’s update UI, which now matches the interface of the Model S Plaid and new Model X that were rolled out this year.
“Drag and drop your favorite apps to any position along the bottom menu bar for easy access. To customize your menu bar, hold any icon and then drag to reorder. To adjust climate controls such as heated seats and defrost, tap on the temperature or swipe up from the bottom of the screen,” the update’s Release Notes read.
Feature Improvements
As with any update, Tesla improved a few key features, including vehicle controls, blind spot monitoring, and Waypoints.
Simplified Controls makes it easier for Tesla owners to focus on navigation, media, and the most common primary controls. The improvement should make accessing features in the infotainment system easier, so driving or operating a Tesla may be more convenient and perhaps even safer.
The Blind Spot Camera feature is probably one of the best improvements in the Tesla Holiday update, as it provides vehicles with a video feed showing their blind spot when a turn signal is activated. “You can now automatically see a live camera view of your blind spot whenever you activate the turn signal,” the Release Notes for the feature read.
The Blind Spot Camera feature will most likely improve the safety of Tesla’s vehicles. Tap Controls>Autopilot>Automatic Blind Spot Camera to enable the feature.
Tesla also made trips easier with Edit Waypoints. The navigation improvements will probably be quite useful to families taking trips this holiday. The feature allows drivers to reorder or add multiple destinations to their route. Edit Waypoints will update the arrival times for each change on the route. “To add a stop, or edit a trip, initiate a navigation route, and tap the more options button not he turn list,” wrote Tesla on the Edit Waypoints Release Notes.
New Arcade Improvements
Being a Holiday Update, 2021.44.25 is rife with a number of improvements for Tesla Theater and Tesla Arcade. Access to a popular social media platform has also been enabled.
First up is Sonic the Hedgehog, which Elon Musk himself announced on Twitter recently. Multiplayer support for The Battle for Polytopia has also been enabled, which should make in-car gaming sessions even more fun.
Sudoku has also been added to the Tesla Arcade, complete with a mode that includes a smart hint system for beginners. Also, the popular social media app TikTok is now accessible to Teslas.
Other Improvements
Update 2021.44.25 is not all fun and games. Tesla included some Cold Weather Improvements to its Holiday Update, too. Preconditioning the cabin from the Tesla Mobile App when the battery is at a lower state of charge is now enabled. First row seat heaters can now automatically regulate seat temperatures based on the cabin’s environment and control set temperature.
Managing dashcam clips is also easier, as videos can now be deleted directly from the infotainment system. Themes for the infotainment system have been rolled out, too. For instance, Dark Mode is now available for Tesla displays. Dark Mode may be a simple update, but it could make vehicles safer, as a darker display reduced the chance of screen glare for the driver.
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Tesla Robotaxi ride-hailing without a Safety Monitor is proving to be a difficult task, according to some riders who made the journey to Austin to attempt to ride in one of its vehicles that has zero supervision.
Last week, Tesla officially removed Safety Monitors from some — not all — of its Robotaxi vehicles in Austin, Texas, answering skeptics who said the vehicles still needed supervision to operate safely and efficiently.
BREAKING: Tesla launches public Robotaxi rides in Austin with no Safety Monitor
Tesla aimed to remove Safety Monitors before the end of 2025, and it did, but only to company employees. It made the move last week to open the rides to the public, just a couple of weeks late to its original goal, but the accomplishment was impressive, nonetheless.
However, the small number of Robotaxis that are operating without Safety Monitors has proven difficult to hail for a ride. David Moss, who has gained notoriety recently as the person who has traveled over 10,000 miles in his Tesla on Full Self-Driving v14 without any interventions, made it to Austin last week.
He has tried to get a ride in a Safety Monitor-less Robotaxi for the better part of four days, and after 38 attempts, he still has yet to grab one:
Wow just wow!
It’s 8:30PM, 29° out ice storm hailing & Tesla Robotaxi service has turned back on!
Waymo is offline & vast majority of humans are home in the storm
Ride 38 was still supervised but by far most impressive yet pic.twitter.com/1aUnJkcYm8
— David Moss (@DavidMoss) January 25, 2026
Tesla said last week that it was rolling out a controlled test of the Safety Monitor-less Robotaxis. Ashok Elluswamy, who heads the AI program at Tesla, confirmed that the company was “starting with a few unsupervised vehicles mixed in with the broader Robotaxi fleet with Safety Monitors,” and that “the ratio will increase over time.”
This is a good strategy that prioritizes safety and keeps the company’s controlled rollout at the forefront of the Robotaxi rollout.
However, it will be interesting to see how quickly the company can scale these completely monitor-less rides. It has proven to be extremely difficult to get one, but that is understandable considering only a handful of the cars in the entire Austin fleet are operating with no supervision within the vehicle.
Tesla has given its biggest hint that Full Self-Driving in Europe is imminent, as a new feature seems to show that the company is preparing for frequent border crossings.
Tesla owner and influencer BLKMDL3, also known as Zack, recently took his Tesla to the border of California and Mexico at Tijuana, and at the international crossing, Full Self-Driving showed an interesting message: “Upcoming country border — FSD (Supervised) will become unavailable.”
FSD now shows a new message when approaching an international border crossing.
Stayed engaged the whole way as we crossed the border and worked great in Mexico! pic.twitter.com/bDzyLnyq0g
— Zack (@BLKMDL3) January 26, 2026
Due to regulatory approvals, once a Tesla operating on Full Self-Driving enters a new country, it is required to comply with the laws and regulations that are applicable to that territory. Even if legal, it seems Tesla will shut off FSD temporarily, confirming it is in a location where operation is approved.
This is something that will be extremely important in Europe, as crossing borders there is like crossing states in the U.S.; it’s pretty frequent compared to life in America, Canada, and Mexico.
Tesla has been working to get FSD approved in Europe for several years, and it has been getting close to being able to offer it to owners on the continent. However, it is still working through a lot of the red tape that is necessary for European regulators to approve use of the system on their continent.
This feature seems to be one that would be extremely useful in Europe, considering the fact that crossing borders into other countries is much more frequent than here in the U.S., and would cater to an area where approvals would differ.
Tesla has been testing FSD in Spain, France, England, and other European countries, and plans to continue expanding this effort. European owners have been fighting for a very long time to utilize the functionality, but the red tape has been the biggest bottleneck in the process.
Tesla Europe builds momentum with expanding FSD demos and regional launches
Tesla operates Full Self-Driving in the United States, China, Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea.
Elon Musk
SpaceX Starship V3 gets launch date update from Elon Musk
The first flight of Starship Version 3 and its new Raptor V3 engines could happen as early as March.
Elon Musk has announced that SpaceX’s next Starship launch, Flight 12, is expected in about six weeks. This suggests that the first flight of Starship Version 3 and its new Raptor V3 engines could happen as early as March.
In a post on X, Elon Musk stated that the next Starship launch is in six weeks. He accompanied his announcement with a photo that seemed to have been taken when Starship’s upper stage was just about to separate from the Super Heavy Booster. Musk did not state whether SpaceX will attempt to catch the Super Heavy Booster during the upcoming flight.
The upcoming flight will mark the debut of Starship V3. The upgraded design includes the new Raptor V3 engine, which is expected to have nearly twice the thrust of the original Raptor 1, at a fraction of the cost and with significantly reduced weight. The Starship V3 platform is also expected to be optimized for manufacturability.
The Starship V3 Flight 12 launch timeline comes as SpaceX pursues an aggressive development cadence for the fully reusable launch system. Previous iterations of Starship have racked up a mixed but notable string of test flights, including multiple integrated flight tests in 2025.
Interestingly enough, SpaceX has teased an aggressive timeframe for Starship V3’s first flight. Way back in late November, SpaceX noted on X that it will be aiming to launch Starship V3’s maiden flight in the first quarter of 2026. This was despite setbacks like a structural anomaly on the first V3 booster during ground testing.
“Starship’s twelfth flight test remains targeted for the first quarter of 2026,” the company wrote in its post on X.
Tesla Robotaxi ride-hailing without a Safety Monitor proves to be difficult
Tesla gives its biggest hint that Full Self-Driving in Europe is imminent
